Tag Archives: dark pathos

This month we leave ancient myths and time-honored tales to devote ourselves to a modern composer of fairy tales. It takes real art and a profound grasp of human nature to create the kind of story that rings true across differing cultures and thus becomes told and retold time and time again, fitting seamlessly into the repertoire of wonder tales read aloud in the evening before bedtime.

Hans Christian Anderson was such a fellow. Bullied during an impoverished childhood he took refuge in books and made the land of enchantment his own at a very early age. He was an awkward shy man with unfortunate features, given to romantic crushes on beautiful unobtainable people. The suffering and depression thus engendered added that dark undertone to stories based on acute observation and understanding of the quirks of human behavior. Though humor isn’t an overt feature of his stories it lurks in the character sketches of his secondary characters. The mother duck that hatches a swan, silly Thumbelina and her toad, the poor soldier’s magic gadget which allows him to know what everyone in town is having for dinner all represent sly tongue-in-cheek sketches of human psychology and culture, keeping the stories just as fresh today as when he wrote them.

It is just this combination of bold plots, dark pathos and embedded humor that appealed to me and also thousands of other children around the world. Certainly it is a mix that strongly mirrors the reality of many childhoods. Though adults often choose to forget, children often find adult behavior ludicrous. They quickly learn to hide their smiles and opinions, but revel in stories, which subtly mock their guardians.

“The Princess and the Pea” is one of our favorites. It is very short- we’ll see how we get on as we go along. Lot of other stories by H.C. Anderson are jumping up and down right off-stage impatiently waiting their turn!!

Meanwhile, today the story hit me as very African, in that African tales often deal with relationships between people involving their place in the family, tribe or society. The Princess and the Pea is a mother-in-law story. It has only three characters and two props – the mattress(es) and the pea.

African families tend to be large intimate extended associations with little privacy and an abundance of opinions in which the mother’s voice and views dominant in domestic affairs. When a new wife enters the household she is frequently in competition with her husband’s mother for his attention. Of course this happens in many cultures around the world, but in western countries, particularly the United States where women exercise power outside the home and families live in small private units, mother-in-law issues have greatly subsided. However, Anderson was writing at an earlier time when living space was divided into two domains – the domestic and public. Women ruled the domestic sphere and men the public. This story depicts a power struggle between the matriarch (queen) and the son’s fiancé. Though the prince loves this woman, he will not save her from the trials imposed by his mother and closes his eyes to any conflict. The bride wins her place in the family because her innate character and backbone (depicted in reverse as sensitivity) let her prevail.

In my collage racism (hinted at in the different skin tones of mother, son and bride) is a metaphor for all the ways we humans rank and judge each other according to our differences. In this story we sense no one would really be good enough for the queen’s son, because she doesn’t want to share him at all. Thus she is looking for any and all reasons to discredit and discard his lover.

However, the young woman is accepted and she does become part of the family, so the different skin tones also show the beautiful melding and acceptance possible when we manage to set prejudice aside.

The earliest known bedding dates to 77,000 BCE and was discovered in Sibudu Cave, South Africa. Beds have always been a sign of wealth. Until recently they were often listed in wills as significant pieces of property. The number of mattresses available to the Queen implies prodigious wealth. When the girl calls for more and more of them, she is attempting to demonstrate ability and poise in coping with that unfamiliar wealth.

Dried peas are still a very important food staple in Africa as they were for many centuries in Europe where they often served to ward off famine. (“Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, pease porridge in the pot nine days old.”) Perhaps this bride-to-be’s sensitivity to the pea portends a respect for food, survival and the necessity to provide and care for the general population of her new kingdom.